StrangeSox

I don't know how anyone could watch something like trump's performance tonight and think "yes, this man should be president of the United States."

QUOTE (brett05 @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 01:23 PM) I did. Of a completely liberal court. No surprises really. You don't seem to have any sort of argument here other than calling anything you don't like liberal. Do you disagree with the bare facts that the court laid out? Why? What evidence do you have to the contrary? Why is it "bold" to call what the NC legislature did racially motivated/targeted? QUOTE (brett05 @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 01:25 PM) Just because certain rules can be broken doesn't mean I want to. If you don't think anyone could just do this either the three polling places I've been a part of are an anomaly or you aren't too observant of polling places. It can't happen and doesn't. You'd need to be registered at that particular place, you'd need to know their names, you'd need to not have already been there and be recognized by the election judges and poll watchers, and you'd need to match the signature on the voter registration roles. There are other paths to voter fraud that are substantially easier than in-person individual voter fraud. Stuffing ballot boxes, exploiting absentee or mail-in voting, "losing" ballots from certain precincts, tampering with electronic voting machines, etc. Those are all also rare in this country, but they're much more practical avenues of voting fraud than a large-scale in-person fraud that would require a substantial number of people and coordination to be large enough to effect most races. QUOTE (brett05 @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 01:26 PM) Literally the defense on why Chicago is democratic. Not really? Chicago is democratic because a bunch of democrats live there, not because of voter ID laws or lack thereof.

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 12:26 PM) Literally the best possible defense of what NC did is "they didn't do it to suppress black voters, they did it to suppress Democrats" which, if you are actually going to roll with that, holy s*** you're a hack. This is literally Texas' defense for some of their laws http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/texas-voting-ri...-not-about-race

QUOTE (brett05 @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 12:01 PM) I read the PDF as well as the left leaning Washington Post article. It's pretty bold to accuse this of being a race driven event IMO. It's not particularly bold when they were so obvious about it, as the court observed.Read the court ruling in full, if you haven't yet.

That's the court ruling. Read it if you want to understand what was wrong with the law.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 11:29 AM) Just reading the bill isn't sufficient. You have to know the background and intent of it. The NC legislators literally researched race-based statistics on voting practices and then started banning all the ones used disproportionately by black people, with no real justification. Their research found that one voting practice was used more often by white people: mail-in voting. This is also the form of voting MOST prone to fraud. The law left it untouched. http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/BillLookUp/...mp;BillID=hb589 This is the history of the entire "Voter ID" movement. Laws that are ostensibly about protecting electoral integrity but ultimately serve to disenfranchise people likely to vote for the other party to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist while ignoring the same potential fraud issues when its more likely to impact their own voters.

QUOTE (brett05 @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 11:21 AM) Perhaps I have misread it months ago. I'm open to that. Can you provide an unbiased link to the bill for me to review? Read the lower court's decision. The bill doesn't explicitly state "no black people can vote," but the legislative history as reviewed by the court found that to be abundantly clear. Here's a short preview: Incidentally, Shelby County is one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever written and really undermines the claim that the Roberts court is liberal.

QUOTE (brett05 @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 11:17 AM) By your statement all laws are illegal as all laws are made for certain reasons. Uh, no. There are certain reasons that it is not okay for a legislature to use to make a law. That doesn't mean that there are no reasons that are okay. Specifically disenfranchising protected classes is one of those certain reasons that are really not okay to use when crafting a law. Uh, really, no. Voting is a right for all except those that have had it explicitly revoked (convicted felons). Voter ID is ostensibly a way to stop in-person voter fraud, not decide who or who doesn't have the right to vote, although in-person fraud is non-existent. I'll let you puzzle out why this scheme of yours wouldn't actually work and why it doesn't ever actually happen in reality.

QUOTE (brett05 @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 11:07 AM) The reason a law is made does not necessarily devalue the law itself. Actually it is explicitly illegal to make laws for certain reasons, and NC's law, which was more expansive than just Voter ID, was found to be in blatant violation of those laws. Voting is a fundamental right whereas Wrigley Rooftops are not. There are mechanisms in place stopping someone from voting multiple times, and you could not go to your local precinct and cast votes all day. In-person voter fraud is essentially non-existent, and whenever various states have been pressed in court to provide examples, they admit that they can't. There are other forms of voting fraud that are easier and that voter ID does nothing to address.

Nate Cohn looks at the current state of the polling and previews the coming wave of high quality polls http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/upshot/h...s&smtyp=cur And don't forget the massive disparity in GOTV/campaign organizing at this point. Clinton has dozens of offices in every contestable state whereas trump has hardly any nationally and zero in key states he absolutely needs to win. This election is providing a great experiment for poli sci people on the effects of GOTV efforts. Full-blown modern, expensive, extensive GOTV over essentially nothing, and we'll see if that makes a difference in the polls vs. actual results.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 10:55 AM) ? It says he has some and will release some but that none of it is good. I can buy that. Trump hasn't been in politics for decades and God know his campaign isn't organized. Yes that was a pretty good self-own on my part!

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 10:45 AM) The guy's terrible for sure, but is this because of partisanship or availability of information? We know he was provided the hacked Clinton/DNC stuff. Does he have RNC/Trump stuff to leak? He's said he has no interest in leaking Trump stuff and that he does have some. http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/08/26/a...ny-trump-leaks/

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 10:39 AM) Don't be fooled by the "Trump has a 45-43 lead in the latest poll" stories. He's getting crushed or losing by a sizeable margin in most of the states he needs to win. Unless the vague Assange threat of dropping some major news on Hillary this week is legit bad, there's really no way she loses. FWIW Assange has made this threat about various people many times in the past and has always fell flat on his face. He even made this promise about Clinton already, saying he was going to drop something during her DNC speech. It really betrays his claims of being non-partisan, too. Strategically timing releases of material that would be politically damaging to only one party while saying you won't release anything on the other isn't exactly non-partisan. There's something to keep in mind about some of the polls out there, too. The LA times/USC and Reuters/Ipsos polls are both tracking polls, which are substantially different in their methodology from 'normal' sampling polls. Those polls are following the same pool of about 3000 people and polling several hundred of them daily whereas normal polls sample the whole registered voter poll randomly each time. The second is that Reuters/Ipsos changed their methology substantially a couple of weeks ago under the radar, and their likely voter model has white voters turning out at record high levels and minority voters at record low levels. I'm still following the "throw 'em all in the mix and just follow the aggregate trends" mindset rather than trying to pick apart each and every poll, but it is something to keep in mind. That said, the trend over the past couple of weeks has been a tightening race, but the race has tightened to the about what Obama's biggest polling lead over Romney was at any point in 2012. Clinton's spike in percentage is tapering off a bit from her post-DNC, post-complete-Trump-meltdown high, but Trump is still really struggling to break out of the low 40's.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 10:37 AM) His argument is basically that if the court rules on a liberal law, it is a liberal ruling unless the court throws it out. Sure, but even if you want to get that simplistic (which misses an awful lot of what the court does and why, even strategically how they vote and what cases are even heard in the first place), the aggregate over the past several decades is still not a liberal court. brett, why do you think the NC law should have been allowed to stand? The lower courts found a clear and explicit history of the legislature crafting the law specifically to disenfranchise minority voters.

QUOTE (brett05 @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 10:25 AM) Right, you explained it and I countered it showing that the court is indeed liberal leaning. No, you listed a couple of issues without addressing the actual history and ideological makeup of the court over the past several decades. There's no objective analytics that would show a liberal court. Oh, ok. I look forward to quoting this post on 11/9.

Gary Johnson’s Hard-Right Record Gary Johnson spent his time as New Mexico’s governor championing private prisons and austerity. He’s not worth a protest vote.

QUOTE (brett05 @ Sep 7, 2016 -> 06:48 AM) Mostly liberal now. This measure should have failed. The asylum is being run by the inmates and it needs to stop. No, as was already explained to you the last time you tried to claim that the SCOTUS has been liberal for a while because right wing conservatives don't win every single case. Thankfully, this is also not reality.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cong...k-idUSKCN11C109

All charities use tax payer money in that they're tax exempt, so it just seems off to level this criticism at only the Clinton Foundation.

Kissinger is an awful man responsible for many terrible things.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Sep 2, 2016 -> 08:28 AM) Kissinger, George Schultz mull Clinton endorsement Nothing like getting an endorsement by someone who should be in prison for war crimes. You'd hope she'd reject it, but probably not.

I'm with taco trucks

I'm no fan of Clinton's hawkishness, but she isn't the one openly advocating for more war crimes in this election

It's money made available to former presidents and he's using it on his charity foundation. It's not a scandal.

QUOTE (DrunkBomber @ Sep 1, 2016 -> 08:37 AM) Bill Clinton used tax dollars to subsidize foundation, private email support Program for ex-presidents paid salaries and benefits to Clinton aides at the center of controversies. No. https://mobile.twitter.com/brianefallon/sta...327966689300484 The underlying story is that bill Clinton used money given to him for being president to staff his charity, but this is a scandal because of Clinton rules.